


The Terrible Absolute

by LostSnowdrift



Category: Flight Rising
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, I legitimately forgot what the gods' canon names were, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Apocalypse, TABSVerse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2020-12-27 01:36:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21110549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostSnowdrift/pseuds/LostSnowdrift
Summary: Nine nations of dragons ruled the world of Dragonhome, maintaining an unsteady peace. They waited for the gods of Dragonhome to return, and reclaim their empty thrones. Ten years ago, a dragon named Abso wandered the world, seeking its wonders. But along the way, he rediscovered a long-lost form of dark magic, and the troubled history of the gods who once used it...Years after Abso's story, another dragon awakens in a wasteland, with no memory of herself. It's after the end of the world, and everyone's gone. There's no heroic battle to fight, no one left to save. With only Abso's name in her memory, Lethe sets out to discover who she is, how their stories are connected, and what happened to the world of Dragonhome...





	1. Foreword

**The Terrible Absolute**  
_or, The Last Days of Dragonhome, _  
_or, a Story about Dragonkind, Second Chances, and the Apocalypse, _  
_or, the Rise, Ruin, and Restoration of Abso and the Gods, _  
_or, Our Friends Who Live Far Away, _  
_or, a Dragon In Search of Lost Time, _  
_or, The First and Last Rule of Practicing Magic, _  
_or, The Reason We Did Something Different This Time _

To whoever may find this: 

Some of you or your civilization may discover a new and powerful kind of magic, involving the manipulation and destruction of a person's soul. We called it animancy; you may call it a different name. _Avoid this kind of magic at all costs. If you are currently using this magic, stop using it immediately._ This is a warning from me to you, and from our entire civilization, and from all those who came before us. 

This text explains why you should avoid animancy, and documents the misguided attempts of all those who tried it. But in short, no matter how noble your intentions or how careful your hands, something will go wrong -- with catastrophic consequences. The mortal soul is just too volatile for mere mortals to control.

I have omitted the details of the animantic rituals, and all the machines have been torn down. And the few survivors of the disaster still remember that day, the wounds still fresh in their minds. They will not tell you how it was done. Yet, to tell the story completely, I have to tell you what animancy is, and its basic principles. And for that, I am sorry. Xern did the same thing a long time ago--omitted the rituals, destroyed the documentation. But I figured it out anyway. The truth is, it is not conceptually difficult, and no doubt one of you will figure it out too. And for that, I'm sorry--sorry that I've inflicted this terrible curse upon your world. 

_-Abso_  
  


Animancy is devastating on a global scale. We have seen crumbling cities and the ashen remains of farmland, everything reduced to rubble. We have seen the shards of planets, cracked in half like trees burned by lightning. I have attached some photographs, but they don't do it justice. I wish I could show you in person. I wish I could force you to look, long and deep, at the ruin you might bring to everyone.

But animancy is devastating on a personal scale as well. It destroys anyone who tries to use it. Most of the animancers we have known were not bad people. They were bright, curious spirits who were trying to do right. But the implications of animancy, of destroying the thing that makes us truly alive, are horrifying. The weight is too much for mortal minds to hold. It warps people into ruins of themselves, pale shadows of who they used to be. I hope my contributions to this text capture that process. 

Animancy kills everyone involved, even the caster. When someone tampers with the soul, no one is left happy.

_-Lethe_  
  


The world itself can recover, given enough time. But it's awfully hard to heal the damage to people. Impossible really, in all but the best cases. 

Diseases can be cured, infections can be cleansed. But the injuries caused by animancy can't be undone. Animancy destroys everything that makes people who they are: their personality, their ambition, their emotion, their warmth. Blood, scales, and bone can be replaced. Identity cannot.

By practicing animancy you will destroy every scrap of who you are, and those close to you can only watch as you burn away. That kind of loss is traumatizing, and you are knowingly inflicting it on those people.

The same can happen to your loved ones, too. Think about them. Look at them, if they're nearby. Think about the fact that you could hurt them beyond repair, mangle them beyond all recognition. Think about their destroyed bodies, their broken souls; think about everything that makes them who they are, sent to oblivion. 

Think about if it's worth saying goodbye. Think about the fact that people love you, even if it's hard to see sometimes. Think about the fact that you are valuable, and you are certainly more valuable alive than you would be as a corpse. If you can still read this, it's not too late to change your mind. 

_-Thaumiel_  
  


Hopefully you have listened to my companions' messages. Do not practice animancy. Eliminate any animancer who ignores our call.

This is your first and last warning.

You may think this is too harsh, and I am inclined to agree. But the risks are too perilous to ignore. You endanger not just yourself, but the lives of all those who live and breathe in your world, the history that brought those lives into the present, and the future lives they will bring. You risk the totality of civilization. Ask yourself if it is worth it. 

If you ignore us, and if I am still alive, then I will devote my entire life to destroying you. I will spend every last breath seeking you out. I will not sleep, I will not rest, I will not stop until I find you. And when I do, I will strike you down with the weight and fury borne by my ancient bones. It is not a duty I enjoy, but it must be done.

If you are one of my appointed heirs, enforce this with every fiber of your being. 

_-Laravel_  
  


This world-ending curse...it chases us. It follows the spirit. It dooms any life intelligent enough to conceive of it. Where there is thinking life, there is anima. Where there is anima, there is animancy, and someone clever enough to figure it out. Where there are clever people, there are arrogant people too, who think they were clever and their predecessors ignorant. They practice animancy, and destruction soon follows.

Perhaps that end is not a matter of if, but when. Inevitable. I hope that it's not. And I'm begging you, please, learn from our mistakes. We were given warning, we didn't listen, and we paid dearly for it. This book holds the terrible weight of two dead worlds, and we have paid so much to tell you this. If I could show you the ruins of our home, I would. Whatever profit you think you can make, whatever altruism you wish to give, it is not worth the ultimate price. I am warning you from the pity and sorrow in my heart. Please, please do not let it go to waste. Listen to us.

This is my only warning: avoid animancy at all costs. The remainder of this text is justification for that warning. It is the story of the last people who tried to use it, and how they met their end; it is a story about the end of the world. I hope you listen closely.

_-Abso_  
  



	2. p0ch001 - Wake

# Part 0: The Wasteland

She woke, because she was in too much pain to stay asleep. A heavy weight pressed down on her, digging sharp and jagged edges into her skin; she breathed through raspy and ragged coughs, choking on the dusty air. Despite her circumstances, she was alive, and she was determined to stay that way.

The slumbering creature stood up slowly, heaving chunks of dirt and rubble off her body as she awakened. Every joint and sinew ached as she moved. Her body felt strange and unfamiliar, obscured by pain and amnesia; her unconscious control of her body was gone, and she had to force her muscles to move, consciously guiding each one like a puppeteer pulling strings. This form was new to her, almost acted against her in a way. She moved slowly, but at least she could move.

What was she? Who was she?

"Dragon", she knew, from instinct. She didn't have much else to go on. Her first and only memory was an explosion: a blinding white burst of light; a deafening blast of noise, a mixture of a building collapsing and an orchestra warming up and playing a thousand discordant melodies. And then, a silent white. Anything beyond that was absent, any memory of herself or her identity obliterated and erased. She didn't even have a name. She felt at the fuzzy edges of her memory, trying to recall anything else, but only found a splitting headache and a ringing noise. It hurt to think.

The dragon took stock of herself, discovering what she had. She was a long, serpentine dragon, with shining white scales and a golden mane of fur. Two forelimbs, two back legs. Two horns, a tail, dorsal spines. Eyes, nostrils, fangs, claws, scales ... that much felt normal, at least. She didn't know why that was normal, or how she knew what normal was. But it was normal. 

She tested her wings. Two leathery sails opened behind her--and a pair of feathered wings, and two wings made of ethereal flame. Having six wings...that felt unusual, but she couldn't explain why. Her wings were an iridescent orange, reminiscent of sunset. Her flame-wings burned but gave off no heat, and didn't hurt her. 

Where was she? How did she get here?

She was standing in a layer of fine white ash, surrounded by piles of broken glass, twisted metal, and flowers that shouldn't have been alive. The skeleton of a building loomed above her, warped and wasted, with its metal bars and girders twisted like gnarled trees. The walls were lattices of glass panels, most of the glass smashed and shattered. Blood-red flowers were planted in upturned pots, and despite the destruction and lack of light, they somehow managed to grow.

And the dragon observed more things. She was in the middle of some wreck or ruin. There were other beings once--where they were now, she didn't know. The air was thin, and it was hard to breathe. The sun was pale, and the sky was neither dark nor light, but a grey and oppressing haze, a perpetual dusk. 

A thick quiet hung over everything, snuffing out the noise of her footsteps, her heavy breaths. All was still. Sterile. No noise from wildlife, no whirring or buzzing of machines, no trees or plants, not even a breeze blowing through the ruins. Nothing but herself, and the quiet sound of ash under her claws. Whatever destroyed this place had moved on. All that was left was silence--silence, and red flowers.

"What happened?" she said. It hurt to speak, exercising muscles she'd never used before. Those words hung in the air, with no one to listen to them. And she asked herself again: what happened to this place? What happened to her?

She didn't know much. But she knew she couldn't stay here. There was no food, no water, no shelter. No answers either. She inched forward, hesitant. She didn't know what she was hoping to accomplish. She didn't know where she was going. But she couldn't linger. She limped away from the rubble, at first slow and unsteady. As she got used to her body, the aching subsided, and she picked up the pace.

She emerged from the cave of rubble and gazed, awestruck, at the silent world before her. A pale light, suspended in a dull sheet of grey, cast over an infinite plane of sand and ash. She saw the vast world in front of her, stretching to the horizon and melting seamlessly into the sky. The world before her looked pale and washed-out. She thought of her little ruin swallowed up by the horizon, just one small dot in a sea of white ashes, and suddenly felt very small. The wind was still, and no creatures stirred. The only motion was her unsteady stride. The only sound was the skitter of rubble she kicked up, clicking across the stones -- then the beating of wings as she departed. All else was still.  
  


She flew, for a while. Her six wings billowed beside her as she glided through the air. She didn't understand how they kept her aloft, but they hadn't failed her yet. She blinked back dust and breathed in ragged gasps, inhaling ash with every breath. 

She didn't know where she was going, but she knew she had to go somewhere. So she flew, over hills and trees, over mountains and valleys, over open land and vast waters, over wildlands and crumbling ruins. Desolation stretched across the landscape, as far as she could see. Everything she saw was quiet, the silence somehow filling the air, empty yet oppressive. And all of it was covered in a layer of fine white ash, uniform and undisturbed. The waters were choked with ash, no more than stagnant slurries. 

What happened? Where was anyone, or anything? Why was nothing moving through the ash--why was the world so still? Everything else had been erased, forgotten, taken from her. The only thing left was that question: "what happened". But it was a question worth asking. And at least it was something to do besides wandering the world, waiting to die. Something to keep her mind occupied while she flew, staring at the white wastes below. 

What happened? She couldn't answer--how could she? She could barely even comprehend the question. The scale of the destruction, and how it went on without end. How it spared nothing and no one. The sheer force required to smash the world into powder. The brutal devastation--and the exacting, methodical nature of it. Nothing escaped its wrath. It crushed every square inch of this world. It was beyond her imagination. She didn't know what the world was like before the disaster, but she knew it wasn't like this. But she couldn't imagine what could change it so suddenly, and so completely. Who--or what--could have done this? What were they trying to do? And where were they now? 

Night and day looked the same in the silent gray twilight. The six-winged dragon questioned if time was passing at all. Days went by; she lost count. But the ache in her stomach told her it had been too many. She had to stop flying. The dust clouds were too much for her--her eyes were bloodshot, and ash clung to the places where tears had dried. She could barely keep her eyes open, and the dunes of ash swam and blurred in her vision. She walked instead, staggering forward, dragging her body through the pale ash.

What happened? The question was not an inquiry--it was meditation. A mantra she repeated to herself, as she saw the extent of the wasteland. It was the only thing she had to focus on, the guiding light in a lightless world. The wasteland didn't end. For days, it was the only thing she saw. There were no colors, there was no motion, there were no other people. The entire planet had been razed to the ground. What happened to the world? What happened to her? _What happened?_

Then, in the distance, she saw -- she saw something _move_. A small black dot, crossing the horizon. It was the first motion she'd seen in this dead and static world; throwing caution to the wind, she charged towards it, almost tripping over herself. If it was prey, she could stop her starvation; if it was life, she could stop her loneliness. If it was the monster that did this, she could try to stop it. And if it could kill her--well, at least it was a noble death, and an escape from the wasteland.

The dot in the distance seemed to see her, and draw closer as well. The black dot zoomed towards her, and within seconds they were face to face. The figure in front of her was a patch of space in the shape of a dragon, stars and the cosmos bound by a golden frame. She looked like someone had cut a dragon-shaped hole in reality, filled the hole with cosmos, and outlined the hole with golden metal. Golden spines ran down her back, and jutted out from her elbows and wing-joints; her claws were like swords, long and sharp and polished. Her outline was hazy and ephemeral, wavering and shimmering slightly. The six-winged dragon was a bit startled by this -- but then again, everything was unfamiliar to her, and she didn't know if this was normal. If the figure was startled by her arrival, her face didn't show it either.

"Hello?" the space-dragon said, in a voice that was distinctly draconic. "Are you okay? Do you need ..."

But the six-winged dragon didn't hear the end of that sentence; she slumped to the ground and her tired eyes closed, and the still white world faded to black. 

***

Everything before had been so still, and now the world spun around her. 

The six-winged dragon found herself in the middle of a hurricane, surrounded by a flurry of motion. Dark stormclouds swirled in the sky, and a group of dragons flew through them, streaks of color cutting through the gray. And the six-winged dragon was in the middle of the group, flying alongside them. Dragons of all different colors and races flew in formation; every dragon wore armor and flight goggles, but besides that no two were the same. They carried everything from swords and bows to crystalline bolt-rifles and cannons arcing with electricity, from woodwork bucklers to mechanical power-armor. They were all so different, but they all flew in the same direction, and they all flew with purpose. 

The six-winged dragon shouted into the storm, her words directed at no one in particular. "Hello?! Where am I?!" She got no response. "Someone? Anyone! Please, just tell me what’s happening!"

"I’d like to know the same thing myself," she heard. She spun around, and there was the black space-dragon. "What did you do?," she asked, more of a demand than a question. "Why did you put me here?"

"I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s happening either, please don’t hurt me--"

"You’d better be telling the truth," the space-dragon replied, her voice stern. "If this is the day I think it is, we’d better get moving, fast. Follow the squadron." With that, the space-dragon flew into the swarm. 

The six-winged dragon wanted to ask why, but the other dragon was already gone. She had no choice but to follow. She flew up to a random dragon and tried to ask them questions. "What’s happening? Where am I?" She shouted, with no response. The dragon didn't even acknowledge she was there. What are you--" 

She yelped as the dragon passed straight through her. It didn't hurt her, and the red dragon continued their flight unaffected. She hovered in place as her mind reeled, and more dragons passed through her as though she were made of air. 

She whirled around to look for the space-dragon. Just a few meters ahead, there she was--flying next to their own double. She passed her arm straight through her double, the double unaware of the original. Shocked, she stopped in their tracks. Then the starry space-dragon dived towards the six-winged dragon, fury in her glowing red eyes. She fired beams of ruby light from their claws, the beams spiraling around each other and arcing towards her, but passing through her harmlessly. She closed the gap and pounced at the six-winged dragon, tearing at her eyes, but she passed through and their claws drew no blood. The six-winged dragon screamed and hid behind her wings, trying to curl up into a ball--but she did not fall. 

The space-dragon ignored her cries and attacked the other dragons of the squad, barraging the others with all her might, but her magic and claws found only air. She slashed at the air in frustration before slowing to a halt, and just hovered in place, defeated. The six-winged dragon flew up to them slowly. Something was very wrong, and she wanted to ask the space-dragon why she attacked her, or explain that it wasn't her fault, or try to console her. But she was unsure of what to say. The two dragons hovered side by side as the other dragons flew through them, saying nothing, watching the streaks of color rise into the sky. 

The space-dragon broke the silence first. "Stranger. I don’t know what you’ve done to me," she said. "But when you put me here, on the day of our greatest failure, I thought had a second chance to make things right. But I can’t touch anything. I can’t speak to them. I can’t change anything, and it will play out as it did the first time. And I have to watch it all again...do you realize how cruel that is?"

The six-winged dragon could only shake her head, stumbling over her words. 

The space-dragon huffed. "I would like to leave this place. Surely, you wish to leave too."

She nodded without thinking; she couldn't process everything that was happening.

"And do you know how to fix this? Do you know how to leave this place?"

She shook her head no.

The other dragon sighed. "I thought not. Stay close to me. We’ll look for a way out. And once we’re out of here...then I will deal with you."

The space-dragon shot straight up, trying to catch up with the dragon swarm fading from view. The six-winged dragon followed, flapping her wings as hard as she could.  
  


The two dragons emerged from the swirling center of the storm, along with the squad of dragons. The space-winged dragon stayed near her double, and the six-winged dragon clung near them. They found themselves above a plain of black clouds, occasionally illuminated by flashes of red light. A crimson sky hung above, and thunder rumbled all around them, shaking their wings and their hearts.

"Stay with me," the space-dragon warned. "If I remember correctly, the Drifter should appear..." They paused, counting down the seconds. "Now."

From out of nowhere, a massive battleship appeared above the clouds, its bright glacial blue and shining steel contrasting with the dark red sky. It was a frightening behemoth in the shape of a sword, cutting through the storm, casting a long shadow over the dragons nearby.

The six-winged dragon shuddered. Such a massive thing...may have had enough power to destroy the world. She asked her companion if that was the case.

"Yes, though not directly. I’ll explain in a moment, but pay attention. Avoid the blasts as best as you can. In our state, we may be invulnerable," the space-dragon observed. "But that is no reason to throw caution to the wind."

"The what?!"

Every cannon on the battleship opened fire, raining a salvo of death on the clouds below. The roar thunder of cannon-fire drowned out the thunder of the storm. Rockets, shells, and bolts of fire and magic screamed through the air, a torrent of prismatic death that scattered the dragons below. Some of the projectiles struck true, colliding with dragons in a shower of magical energy, fire, and gore. 

"Stay with me now--we’re going in!" The two dragons and the double climbed higher and higher, accompanied by a small group of dragons. The space-dragon tailed her double, perfectly mirroring her flight. The double weaved between the blasts and flying at breakneck speed, narrowly avoiding a swift death at each turn. Bolts of magic whizzed by them by mere inches, the fiery glows flashing light across their scales, whittling down the group one by one. The six-winged dragon struggled to keep up and would have been hit by several blasts, if she could've been struck in the first place. 

The surviving dragons flew past the battleship, streaking above in a crescendo of energy, and landed on its jagged bow, each one cracking the ice on impact. Together, they ran down the deck of the ship, ducking under the streaks of deadly light. They stopped and huddled under a turret’s massive gun barrel, easily more than four times the size of a dragon. A navy blue dragon pulled out a remote of some kind and furiously tapped at its controls, and the cannon above stopped firing, its noise fading from a roar to a dull whine. 

"Holy shit, I can't believe that worked," she said.

"Thank gods that it did. Let’s proceed," another replied. 

A dark red dragon flew forward, gripping a sword in their front claws. She charged, a roar full of determination rising in her throat, and with a single strike she cut the turret down and kicked the sparking remains over the side. It exploded some ways below. Her attack left a gaping hole in the hull, which the other dragons poured into. The red dragon remained to watch the battle unfold. 

"Are you sure you’re going to be okay, Pyrian?" One said, lingering with her.

"Yeah. I’ll be okay." The dark red dragon tipped her gaze towards the crater. "Stay in formation."

The other dragon nodded and dived into the hole, after everyone else. And the dark red dragon remained, watching prismatic magic explode in the bleeding sky. 

"Abso, for your sake, I hope this ends quickly." With that, the dark red dragon followed her crew. And the two incorporeal observers followed her--not that she could know.  
  


The warriors and their observers charged through the depths of the battleship. They dashed through empty corridors, their claws barely clinking across the metal floors. Blast doors slammed down in the hallways, some reopened by the navy dragon’s remote, some simply torn to shreds. The six-winged dragon watched in awe, and the space-dragon had a grim look on their face.

"What you are seeing is a battleship called the Drifter," the space-dragon explained. "The site of our last stand. The Drifter is powerful, certainly, and a testament to Abso’s intellect."

"Did it destroy the world?" The six-winged dragon asked.

"Not exactly."

Mechanical golems swarmed the halls, slamming their weapons into scaly hides. The clockwork gears in their bodies were covered by thick armor plates; some towered above the invading dragons, while other smaller ones slipped between them. The invading dragons danced around arcs of lightning, the stench of smoke and singed scales filling the air; they tore at the smaller golems as whirring blades sliced their skin, and blood and poison splashed across the walls. The dragons deflected pulses of magic, pressed against the walls in close quarters, with little room to breathe. 

The space-dragon continued to explain, tracing her double’s route through the Drifter’s halls. "This is only a sliver of his power, removed from the source. Abso's tools did not end the world directly, but gave him the power to do so."

Chambers and corridors were suddenly rearranged as the entire floorplan shifted, cutting off passages and opening new ones. The entire facility rattled, shaken by the shifting layout, and the magical energy building deep within. Those dragons unfortunate enough to be caught between rooms were sliced in half, their bodies crushed and torn apart with a sickening crunch and a spray of blood. The six-winged dragon shrieked at the sight.

The space-dragon ignored her cries. "When Abso first started his projects, he did not intend to harm anyone. But in the end, this was his choice. Why he chose this, I cannot say. There are so many reasons..."

In the inner chambers of the Drifter, they saw dragons of all kinds, each floating in a capsule of liquid. Wires ran through each dragon’s body, and a thick tube stabbed straight through their heart. The dragons in capsules lied still, floating gently. By the six-winged dragon’s estimation, there must have been dozens of those capsules lining the walls, perhaps even hundreds.

The invading dragons paused for a second, peering through the glass of each capsule. Some dropped their weapons and tried to find their friends, tears in their eyes. Others urged the group not to think about it. 

"No matter what we said, Abso would not stop, so we had no choice but to stop him. We gathered our strongest warriors and mages, and we launched a desperate attack."

And with another roar, the dark red dragon led them onwards; they disconnected as many capsules as they could, and simply smashed the rest. Explosions rocked the chamber, and glass and acid and fire rained down, and the lights in the halls flickered out. They would avenge the dead.

"This is where we met our end."

And in the deepest chamber of the battleship, they found him: Abso, the dragon behind it all. He stretched his moon-colored wings; his sky-blue scales glowed with a harsh white light, growing brighter and brighter--and then he was barely a dragon at all, but a dragon-shaped haze of harsh white energy. The other attackers backed away, and only the dark red dragon stood her ground. 

Time froze as the six-winged dragon looked into his eyes and saw endless void, and she felt a wave of dread wash over her. And the six-winged dragon knew exactly what was going to happen, as a memory returned to her. The dragon army didn't know they were going to die, but she did. She knew they were all going to meet their end; and she called out to them, as loud as she could, begging them to flee and to survive. They did not hear her.

And the thing that used to be called Abso pulsed with white light, and screamed in anguish; and the chamber filled with a blinding white light, the groaning of metal, and the sound of a thousand discordant melodies...

***

Despite everything, she was still alive. The two dragons woke up in the white ash, in the dead world that was familiar to them. The six-winged dragon stood up slowly, disoriented from the rush of sensations, and still feeling woozy. She rose to her feet, blinked, and found that the space-dragon had already awakened -- and was staring her in the face, towering over her.

"Who are you?" the space-dragon asked, her voice stern.

The six-winged dragon shook her head. "I don't know..."

"Do you have a name?"

"Maybe? But I don't remember it."

"And when you took us to our battle against Abso, how did you do it?"

"The--the battle? I don't know..."

The space-dragon paced around her. "If I am correct, then what you did can only be achieved with dark magic. Animancer, I should have struck you down where you stood."

"Ani--what?"

"Animancy. The dark magic that Abso used," the space-dragon said. "I shall spare your life for now, for you are one of precious few lives I've seen out here. But I will watch over you, and watch over your magic. I will make sure you do not hurt anyone. And if you so much as draw a single drop of blood, intentionally or otherwise, your life is forfeit, and I will slay you where you stand."

Here is an easy trick if you want to gain the upper hand in a conversation: memorize exactly what you want to say beforehand to somebody with vastly less complete knowledge than yours. It is overwhelming and nearly impossible to respond to. Laravel knew this trick, and employed it regularly in her former career.

"W-what?!" The six-winged dragon stumbled backwards, trying to shield herself with her wings. "I don't even know why this is happening and now you want to kill me?!"

"I..." The space-dragon sighed. "I'm sorry. I haven't given you a fair chance. Let me start over."

The space-dragon walked away from the six-winged dragon, leaving a few meters between them. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, before turning back to face the other. "My name is Laravel. In my past life, I was Lord of the Arcane Order, administrator for the Pantheon, and Chief Officer of the Wings of Liberty. I was there in the final days, trying to slay Abso. In my current life, I wander the wasteland, looking for any survivors." 

The six-winged dragon stared blankly at the other. "I ... don't know what most of that means," she said.

"Do you really remember nothing at all?"

"All I remember is the blast that ended the world. The disaster that Abso caused, apparently."

Laravel paused. She appeared to consider this for a moment, but the six-winged dragon couldn't tell what she was thinking. Laravel's stony expression gave nothing away. "In any case. Being taken back to the final battle...that is not something I can do. There aren't any magical artifacts around our location. So it must be you. And that terrifies me. After years of silence, someone suddenly shows up with the magic that can destroy the world, and they claim they can't control it..."

And Lethe remained silent. What could she even say?

"But ... it has always been my role to look after all the people of this world. That includes the dangerous ones too. To show them mercy, to guide them to rehabilitation. If you'll come with me, I will give you food and shelter, and I will tell you what I can."

She thought about it for a moment. Laravel could've been lying about all of this--maybe it was the space-dragon's magic that took her to the final battle--and Laravel could've been leading her into a trap. But if she left, she would almost certainly starve in the wasteland. 

"...okay." Better to take a chance at life than to die for certain.

Laravel stepped back and unfurled her wings. The cosmos swirled within her golden filigree frame, stars and nebulae moving across her inky black sails. Behind them, massive golden rings spun out of thin air, studded with rubies and suspended in a red glow, wide enough for ten dragons to fly through. The shimmering image of a building began to appear inside the rings, coming into focus. 

With that, Laravel opened a door to a hole in the world, and beckoned for the nameless dragon to follow.

The nameless dragon pondered what she had seen. So that was what happened. But a different question took its place, one with a far murkier answer, which would burrow its way into her head, and drive her to the ends of the world and the end of history:

_Why did this happen?_


End file.
